July 6, 2009

One Year In China! Our Aussie Guest and Duck Innards

Yesterday we celebrated our one year anniversary since moving to China! It was a great day and it marked a huge milestone for us. It is weird for us to look back over this past year and see how fast it’s gone. I think some of our most pleasant surprises have come in how much we love living here and how much Chinese we’ve been able to learn in only one short year. We are truly blessed and thankful to be here and look forward to many more wonderful years.

I really want to take a moment to say thank you to all of you. Living here has made me realize that literally everything we have in our lives is because of someone else. Any skill, talent, opportunity or material thing you own is because either someone taught you or gave you the opportunity to do something. We are all in debt to someone else. Heather and I are no exception; we owe so much to each of you at home who help us. We are deeply grateful to each of you for your influence on our lives. Many of you reading this have shaped who we are and make it possible for us to get to live out here. So from the Peterson’s we want to say “thank you”.

Looking forward there are some changes that will be taking place soon that we’re all really excited to share with you, but are waiting for them to be set in stone (as many things can change quickly). We are excited to continue to grow in our Chinese and our understanding of this beautiful culture. We’ll keep you posted.

Lastly, we had a wonderful guest over the past week. A friend of ours from Australia came to visit us and encourage us and it was great. She came at the perfect time as we have really needed some encouragement lately. She truly blessed us with her wisdom and willingness to listen. Thank you Diana! Unfortunately, Heather was sick a lot of this past week with some stomach issues and her body feeling weak. She ate duck innards at the beginning of the week and she thinks that made her sick (go figure, she ate the insides of a duck). She has been feeling better, but still isn’t 100 percent. Next time Heather just pass on duck innards.